A Queer Park is a colorfully free-form space that allows for unique experiences of community and playful freedom within our city. It is, in its design, an exploration into what a park for our ever diverse LGBTQIA2S+ peoples could look like when we start thinking more inclusively about how we represent ourselves. I began by first asking some key questions about what this space can be used for. What would it look like to have all of our communities using this space? Historically, what has been the public’s reaction to our visibility in the past?
With these questions in mind, I have created a space that allows for public events and group get-togethers as well as moments of beauty, privacy, and safety for all who come to enjoy what our urban landscapes have to offer. Since city parks close at night for security, people will primarily access this Queer park during the day, when the sun pierces through the colored glass adorned on the Mandeville Shed, casting colored shadows that shorten and lengthen in a natural dance. The marbled blocks of concrete will lay like weathered rocks that invite people to rest and come together in large or small groupings, like islands of community.
Please join us at our opening reception to an exhibition that will lay out more details on this exciting project.